Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  The Captain’s horse lay dead in the mud, killed instantly by the rain of musket balls, but Liversage himself still drew breath, although his body was likewise riddled with bullets.

  ‘William, my boy,’ he gasped, breathing shallowly. ‘I’m done for. Leave me here and fly, fly while you still can.’

  ‘I’ll no’ leave you here, sir,’ William rasped, his voice hoarse with determination. ‘No sir, I cannae obey tha’ command.’

  William sheathed his sabre and then sprang off River King, tripping and stumbling as he landed awkwardly in the mud. He righted himself quickly, with hot blood pumping its panicked tribal rhythm in his temples and ears as the Russians drew nearer.

  ‘Come on sir, come on!’ he screamed, trying to pull the captain out from under his dead horse.

  ‘You must leave, my boy,’ Captain Liversage croaked, his voice thin and reedy. Blood was beginning to froth in bubbles at the side of his lips, and his face was bone-pale. ‘Do not sacrifice yourself on account of an old, dying man. Fly now before it’s too late! That is an order, boy, an order!’

  ‘No sir, no! I’ll no’ leave you here tae be butchered! I willnae!’

  William howled wordlessly as he pulled with all his might, contracting every muscle in his body in his effort to extract Liversage from under the horse. His effort was successful, and he fell back with a sloshy splat into the viscous mud as the captain’s body was suddenly freed from being trapped beneath over four hundred kilograms of dead flesh. There was no time to falter now though; the Russian cavalrymen were almost upon them. With a boost of fresh strength, William hoisted Liversage up on his shoulders and then slung him over River King’s withers, face-down.

  As he was about to mount River King, William saw Captain Liversage’s exquisite custom-wrought sabre lying in the muck.

  ‘I cannae leave tha’ fir some Russian tae claim,’ he muttered to himself.

  He drew his own standard-issue sabre and flung it aside so that he could sheath the captain’s sabre in his empty scabbard.

  ‘Time tae go!’ he shouted, springing up into River King’s saddle.

  He spurred his froth-soaked horse into one last gallop just as the Russians reached him, and he slalomed through them as they tried to stab and cut at him. William was too fleet and nimble a horseman for this particular batch of raw recruits, and River King, despite his exhaustion, had one final reserve of energy into which he could tap. Of this strength the bold stallion drew deeply, thundering his way through the obstacles of horses and men at a blistering pace.

  The pall of smoke from the battle that hung over the Balaclava valley floor, across which the Light Brigade had so recklessly charged, now provided at least a little cover for the last stragglers to emerge from the hell of bullets, sabres and butchery that had been the battle. The Russians to the left and right, however, continued to pour a hail of fire into the retreating British cavalrymen, many of whom were limping along on foot, their horses having long since been shot out from under them.

  As soon as River King had outstripped his Russian pursuers and disappeared from their view into the suspended forest of gunpowder-smoke trees his gallop slowed to a run, which further slowed to a trot, and finally a limping, hobbled walk as the last of his energy finally dissipated into a stupor of sheer exhaustion. William dropped his hands from the reins and slumped in his saddle, focusing all of his effort now on merely trying to remain conscious. Across River King’s withers Captain Liversage lay, drifting in and out of consciousness and breathing in wheezy, shallow gasps.

  Around these three figures edging their way back out of a hell that was like some Hieronymus Bosch canvas come to life, musket balls zipped their murderous trajectories through the smoke, shells screamed through the frigid air like frantic birds of prey, and from all sides cannons belched their earth-shaking roars, their deadly flatulence as those of stone titans of legend.

  The last of William’s adrenalin had been burned up, and all that was left in its wake were a few crumbly, blackened ashes of what had been a brew of rash courage, blind luck and biting fear. Now the embers within William cooled off, and their glowing hues of red, orange, amber and yellow gave way to a speckled grey mess of numbness and despair. Like charred bones in a firepit, a deep and raking sensation of regret and dread began to materialise in his head. Death had come upon him, yet somehow his body remained alive. He still drew breath, even as warm blood ran down his legs and pooled inside his boots, thick and wet, and dripped from each of his fingertips onto the thirsty earth below with each laboured step that River King took. Through the exponentially swelling pain, the hearts of man and horse still somehow beat on, pumping blood with a tireless diligence through their bodies, even as that precious crimson leaked drop by drop from their bullet wounds and sabre cuts.

  William felt the Reaper’s scythe prickling the skin of his neck with its deadly proximity, the glacial steel of the blade shimmering with all the combined cold of billions of corpses buried and long-rotten. He shook himself awake, trying to keep his eyes open, and willed River King on beneath him with a mumbled slur of barely cogent encouragement.

  Through the blur of his shifting double-vision he saw the corpse of Private Watson on the ground as he and River King plodded past it. The big man’s body was riddled with bullet wounds, and half of his face and head had been taken off by a cannonball.

  ‘I’m sorry Watty,’ William croaked. ‘Looks like the Russians finished the job on your face tha’ I started. I hope you’ve found yoursel’ some peace at last, old boy.’

  He urged River King on, and the horse and the two men he carried continued to move through the maze of strewn corpses and banks of thick smoke.

  William sucked in a breath and bit his lower lip as he saw yet another familiar face frozen in death. As he looked upon the contorted, pain-grimacing expression locked on the visage of the body of Private Smythe, sadness jabbed him with its scorpion stinger and injected its crippling venom into his veins.

  Private Smythe was lying on his side, and his back was arched in gruesome agony. Intestines and other slimy organs spilled out in a macabre pile from a gaping wound in his midsection, where a cannonball had struck him full-on. His hands were frozen in motion, with his fingers locked in a claw-like grip, thick with congealed crimson and purple gore; perhaps in the last few moments that he had been alive he had tried, in a pathetic and futile effort, to stuff his insides back into the cavity from which they had spilled.

  William choked down a sob and looked quickly away as tears burned at the corners of his eyes.

  A flood of urgent questions began rioting through his brain, gushing like water through fractured canals: what had just happened here? Had he really just been through this experience? Was this reality, or some awful nightmare that he just needed to pinch himself to wake up from? Had he died somewhere back there on that battlefield, and was he now wandering this muddy, blood-soaked plane as some sort of phantom, trapped here forever to relive this series of events again and again until time and the universe itself crumbled eventually into nothingness?

  In front of him, on River King’s withers, Captain Liversage coughed weakly and spat out a mouthful of blood. He tried to speak, to say something to William, but his words came out only as an unintelligible mumble.

  It was then, when his eyes caught sight of something truly terrible, that the venom of that injection of sorrow fully hit William’s heart, reaching it at last from its blackening passage through his veins and arteries. And once that poison had billowed and bloomed like a diseased rose opening up to a hell-red sky, it caused him to reel with debilitating shock and gut-wrenching sickness. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and his hands were seized with a tremor so violent that he could no longer maintain his grip on the reins, nor even keep himself upright in the saddle. Dizziness cast its head-swimming spell over his body, and the world began to tipple and teeter upon its tenuous axis. With a whimpering gasp William tipped over and fell from his saddle, landing with a heavy im
pact in a wash of thick mud.

  For there, next to him in the brown, green and red mix of muck, was sprawled a body that had lain so many times by his side in the cellar of Mr Goode’s when they had been chimney sweeps, and then after that in the hay of the stables at Sir MacTaggart’s, or on the lush green grass of the Highland hills beneath a rich cyan sky, with books and sketch pads and a flask of whiskey in their hands, and laughter and smiles on their lips.

  Now, however, those gentle eyes and that soft, introverted smile were frozen forever in an unmoving mask, never to change expression ever again.

  William could not look at Andrew’s body, and could not bring himself to gaze on that face that stared up, eternally up, at the greying sky above. An expression of calm serenity beamed from Andrew’s still visage, and his body was unmarked by any cuts or stabs. The only evidence of violence done to his person was a small round hole between his eyes, where the musket ball that had killed him had entered his skull and wrought its destruction on the exquisite organ within. All of that art, all of that music, and all of those melodies, all of those wondrous images, all of that inspiration and passion and joy contained therein, all had now been erased from this plane of existence, obliterated by the murderous velocity of a round piece of lead, forged by some uncaring stranger in a faraway land, and fired out of a killing device by yet another stranger, who would never see nor understand what that little squeeze of his finger had done to the life of another.

  On the ground next to Andrew was his sketchbook, fallen from his pocket. William pulled it out, his fingers numb and shivering, with his hand seeming to move of its own accord and his eyes merely observing this, as if these digits that held the book belonged to another body and not his own. He flipped through the pages to the last one, the final thing that Andrew had drawn … and it was them, all four of them together, full of life, joyful and smiling, as brothers.

  And then, as the tears came flooding from his eyes, and sadness tore its rampaging passage through his innards, William remembered the scene of Michael charging with wild desperation towards Paul, who had been surrounded by Russian troopers, and afterwards returning alone, lying face-down on his mount, with two broken lances embedded in his back.

  That image, combined with the scene of unspeakable tragedy before him, was the end; William was done and finished. Somehow, through the immensity of the despair, he became aware of the sound of many hooves thundering his way. Looking up, he saw a fist of Russian horsemen charging out of a tear of smoke, heading straight for him with their sabres bright against the drab hues of this field of death.

  William struggled to his feet and stood on shaky, bleeding legs before the Russians as they bore down on him. He did not draw Captain Liversage’s sabre from its scabbard or reach for Andrew’s lance, lying at his feet. Instead, he simply reached inside his jacket with trembling fingers and pulled out the portrait of Aurora. Blood had smeared red smudges over her face, that face that coloured his dreams in a spectrum of pure light and joy every night, that face that danced through his imagination with wistful longing every waking hour … but despite the crimson stains on the portrait the beauty remained, and those painted eyes stared into his with almost as much intensity as they had when he was but inches from the real thing.

  ‘I’m sorry my love,’ he whispered to the portrait. ‘I’ve failed you an’ I’ve failed my brothers. All has ended in despair an’ tragedy. We were no’ meant tae be together in this lifetime, an’ I can see tha’ now. I love you with all my heart an’ soul, an’ I hope that God can see fit tae bring us together in whatever life comes after this one. Goodbye my sweet angel. Goodbye … forever.’

  William tucked the locket back inside his jacket, where it could rest in the quiet, warm dark against his heart, and he then spread his arms out wide to the sides, inviting the sabres and lances to finish him off as he closed his eyes and raised his face to the sky one last time.

  The earth-drumming fury of the charging cavalrymen overwhelmed everything else in its ferocity, and the ground rumbled beneath William’s blood-filled boots as the pack sped toward him. The officer leading the charge was the albino Russian, his face a contorted mask of vicious delight. With a fiendish smile slashed across his angular face, he bore down on William with his sabre raised high above his head, lusting with a ravenous hunger to strike the killing blow that had been denied him earlier.

  William realised, with a spurt of tragedy pulsing through his veins, that he hadn’t pictured it ending like this; impaled on the end of a Russian lance or decapitated by one of their sabres. Mutilated and desecrated, his mortal remains coming to a final rest in a pile of muck on a foreign field many thousands of miles away from those green, green Highland hills. He had hoped – dreamed – that he’d grow old and grey in the company of his friends and his lover, living out their days in simple bliss beneath the yawning sky and wind-whispering trees. None of that was ever to be now. His friends were all dead, as he would soon be. What else was there to do but to wait for that ice-forged scythe to draw its cold edge along his throat?

  William breathed in deeply as tears streamed down his cheeks, inhaling what he imagined would be his last taste of this world’s air. At that very moment, however, a lance, flung with a furious force, whizzed over his head … from behind him.

  The deadly projectile arced through the air and found its mark: it transfixed the albino officer through his bone-white throat and sent him tumbling backwards off his horse. From behind William horses and men coursed in a crashing tide as the British Heavy Cavalry smashed into the pursuing Russians, scattering them in disarray. William sank to his knees amidst the chaos of it all, and a darkness rushed into his mind with a hurricane roar in his ears and a dizzying vertigo in the centre of his skull. He was dimly aware of a voice somewhere to his left, speaking English flavoured liberally with a Manchester accent, and gentle but strong hands lifting him into a saddle. After that, a soothing, warm feeling of comfort settled upon him, and consciousness was swallowed by a closing cloak of shadows, like a pebble sinking into the depths of a dark, still pool.

  48

  WILLIAM

  25th October 1854. British Army Camp, a few miles from Balaclava Valley

  ‘Private Gisborne, wake up! On your feet man, on your feet!’

  The voice was garbled and barely coherent, the sound waves muddied like oil paint diluted into an unusable mess by too much turpentine. Who was this? Where was he?

  Confusion.

  Fear.

  PAIN.

  PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN.

  ‘Come on lad, get up, hurry! Captain Liversage is dying, and he’s requested your presence before he leaves this world. The doctors can finish stitching you up later. Your wounds aren’t fatal, and there are dying fellows who need tending to.’

  William opened his eyes. Through his bewilderment he started to patch the fragmented visual and aural puzzle pieces together into a semblance of coherence. For a few panic-heaving seconds he thought that he was back on the battlefield; the smells of blood and death were omnipresent and intense, and the screams and moans of the wounded and dying rang with horrific clarity in his ears. However, walls of canvas around him blocked off the earth and sky, and doctors were hurrying to and fro with bloodied hands and red-dripping surgical instruments.

  William exhaled a drawn-out sigh of relief at the realisation that he was in a medical tent and was thus safe, for the time being at least. With the chilly air licking at his skin he noticed that he was shirtless, and that his upper body had been cleaned, and his wounds, which were frighteningly numerous, had been stitched up. His entire body ached with a persistent pain that ebbed and flowed in its debilitating intensity, with its focus being particularly concentrated at certain points: the bayonet wound in his thigh, and the bullet wounds in his shoulder and each respective leg.

  His legs, on top of the bullet wounds, were still a mess of congealed blood and torn-up fabric, and while his boots had been removed, his socks remained on his
feet and they were caked black with a gooey coagulation of blood and mud.

  Above him a stern-faced and rotund sergeant was standing, regarding him with a pitiless scowl.

  ‘Come on man,’ the sergeant barked brusquely. ‘Did you not hear me? Up with you! The captain is breathing his last as we speak!’

  Just as William was finally starting to piece together a cogent understanding of the state of his present circumstances, a terrifying bayonet-lunge of a thought plunged its unyielding steel through his heart.

  ‘My friends! Where are they?! Where are Paul, Michael an’ Andrew?! Where are they?! And where’s my horse, my boy River King?!’ he blurted out in a frenzied babble, as nightmarish, half-remembered images began to materialise in ghostly recollections in the drifting banks of memory-fog within his fragmented mind.

  ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about, Private, and there’s no blasted time to worry about such things now. And what’s more, from now on you’ll address me as “sir” and speak to me in a more respectful tone!’

  ‘But my friends sir, I—’

  ‘Enough of that!’ the sergeant snapped. ‘Your damned friends are none of my concern! I’ve got orders to bring you at once to Captain Liversage, and you’re wasting my bloody time about it!’

  ‘I’m sorry sir,’ William groaned through gritted teeth. ‘Let’s go then. Oh, an’ a little aid, sir, if you could, please.’

  ‘Here lad, grip my arm and my shoulder, come on then,’ the sergeant said, softening up a bit and adopting more of a sympathetic tone.

  William gripped the man’s thick forearm and bulky shoulder with shaky hands, and hauled himself out of the cot, grimacing and gasping.

  ‘Excuse me, but where do you think you’re taking that trooper? He’s still got a musket ball lodged in one leg, and he has sabre cuts that need stitching up!’